NOTES — LEPIDOPTERA. 



69 



abundant among its food-plant, tansy, which grew luxuriantly in large 

 patches in the ravine at Saltburn ; P. serotinus {bipunctidactylus)^ 

 Saltburn. 



But probably the best insect taken during our stay was one of the 

 Neuroptera, a specimen of Chrysopa tenella, the smallest and perhaps 

 the rarest of our British Lace-wing Flies. Unfortunately, I did not 

 know the species at the time, or probably could have found more. 

 I think I beat it out of the trees in the wood adjoining the Saltburn 

 Pleasure Gardens. Other Neuroptera taken included Chrysopa 

 flava^ Hemerobius niicans^ and H. humuli^ the latter common ; 

 and of Trichoptera, Linmophilus affinis was abundant among rushes 

 in a ditch at Redcar ; Micropterna sequax equally so in a ' rushy ' 

 hollow on the cliffs near Marske ; whilst Stenophylax latipennis^ 

 Limnophilus hirsutus^ L. sparsus^ and Z. vittatus — the last commonly 

 — also occurred. 



NOTES— LEPIDOPTERA, 



Variation in Lepidoptera from various localities.— At the 



meeting of the Entomological Society of London, on the ist December, 1886, 

 Mr. Howard Vaughan exhibited a long series of Gnophos obscurata^ comprising 

 specimens from various parts of Ireland, North Wales, Yorkshire, Berwick-on- 

 Tweed, the New Forest, Folkestone, Lewes, and the Surrey Hills. The object of 

 the exhibition was to show the variation of the species in connection with the 

 geological formations of the various localities from which the specimens were 

 obtained. Mr. R. Adkin exhibited specimens of Cidaria reticulata^ recently bred 

 by Mr. H. Murray, of Carnforth, from larvce collected by him near Windermere, on 

 Inipatiens noli-me-tangere. Mr. Adkin said that as the food-plant was so extremely 

 local, and consequently difficult for Mr. Murray to obtain, he had endeavoured 

 to get the larvte to feed on some other species of balsam, including the large 

 garden species, usually known as Canada balsam, but that he had not succeeded 

 in doing so. Mr. E. B. Poulton observed that this statement tended to confirm 

 the remarks he made at a recent meeting of the Society on the subject of the 

 habits of lepidopterous larvie with reference to their food-plants. Mr. G. T. Porritt 

 exhibited forms of Cidaria siiffnviata from Huddersfield, including one very 

 similar to that taken at Dover by Mr. Sydney Webb (Proc. Ent. Soc. 1886, 

 p. xxv), and one still more extreme, having only the basal mark and the central 

 stripe, with a slight streak at the tip, brown, the remainder of the wings being 

 perfectly white. He also exhibited a series of small bilberry-fed Hypsipetes eliitata 

 from Huddersfield, showing green, red-brown, and black forms. — H. Goss, 

 Secretary, Entomological Society. 



Catoeala fraxini in North Lincolnshire.— It was, I think, in 

 Sept. 1875 that I heard from my mother living at Hogsthorpe, a village near 

 Alford, in a letter, that a large moth had been found under an ash-tree in the yard 

 of the gasworks there, and duly consigned to the killing bottle of Mr. Bucknall, 

 a shoemaker who did a little collecting. I wrote for it at once. To my great 

 surprise and pleasure it proved to be a male Catoeala fraxini. My mother shortly 

 afterwards told me that when brought to her by the gasman the wings were soft 

 and cnmipled, so that, as she had seen me do with other moths, she allowed it to 

 crawl up something upright till they had expanded and become dry. I regret that 

 I have mislaid the diary containing the precise date of the capture. The insect is, 

 of course, one of my greatest treasures, as it was undoubtedly bred on the tree 

 under which it was found. — R. Garfit, Alford, loth January, 1887. 



March 1887. 



